Gordon Clark: Vancouver the most expensive Canadian city to move to

Vancouver, the beautiful city of my birth, got more lousy news last week concerning its affordability and ability to recruit workers and, therefore, employers.

Movinga, which bills itself as “Europe’s leading online provider of moving services,” announced in its 2017 Relocation Price Index that Vancouver is the most expensive city in Canada to move to, and the 15th most expensive city in the world out of 75 top recruitment destinations in 51 countries.

This will surprise few people in Vancouver, notorious for its high housing costs.

The company reviewed the cost of moving 250 kilometres to each city and added that to the cost for one person of living in the new community for a month, giving consideration to the rent on an a small, 35-square-metre apartment and the prices to set up a mobile phone, for food and drink, and a month’s use of public transit.

For Vancouver, that figure was estimated to be $1,936.71 US — well above Toronto, the other Canadian city on the list, at $1,671.93, the 20th most-expensive city to move to.

Luanda, Angola, was the most expensive city to move to, with first-month costs totalling $3,259.32, while the least expensive was Tunis, Tunisia, at just $397.80. Johannesburg, South Africa, was the least expensive city where English is an official language, at $722.74.

The Movinga report describes conditions similar to those in the Insights West/Resonance Consultancy survey from a few days ago the warned that “Metro Vancouver’s management class could be leaving in droves,” largely because of high housing costs. The pollsters found that a shocking 34 per cent of Metro Vancouver homeowners were “planning to sell their homes and move to more affordable markets in the next five years — the highest percentage compared to homeowners in other regions of the province.”

The Movinga data won’t help with the worst problem revealed by the Insights West poll — that people in the middle of the careers, Gen-Xers aged 35 to 54, were the most likely to say that they plan to leave Vancouver. (Presumably, that also means that they are most likely to be disinclined to move here.) Forty per cent of them said they planned to move to cheaper housing in the next five years. That compared to 28 per cent of older Baby Boomers and 35 per cent of younger Millennials.

A massive percentage of all three generations said that “the region is unaffordable,” with Gen-Xers, at 89 per cent, most likely to say that.

There is a consensus among urban planners, developers and many politicians that the region needs to massively increase the housing supply to meet demand and to reduce housing costs, although I don’t see much evidence that it is working. The region recorded a staggeringly high 27,914 housing starts last year compared to 20,863 in 2015 — a 34-per-cent increase — yet many people still received huge increases in their property assessments. There are now reports of businesses (and likely some homeowners) planning to leave the region because of massive and unaffordable tax hikes linked to those rising assessments.

The Movinga report points out that there are many other cities around the world where various things are less affordable, not that it will bring much relief to Vancouverites struggling to make ends meet.

New York, for instance, had the most expensive monthly rent for that 35-square-metre apartment at $2,052.15 US, London, England, had the most expensive public transit ($153.58 US a month compared to $66.26 in Vancouver) while Zurich, Switzerland had the priciest cell phones ($97.16 versus $64.06 here).

Other fun facts: Vancouver had the ninth-highest phone bill, the 12th highest rent, the 17th highest food and drink costs, and was 26th for transit cost among the 75 cities.

Tunis, Tunisia, had the lowest monthly rent at $127.02. Moving costs were highest in Hong Kong ($3,877.29 US) and lowest in Seoul, Korea ($297.32), food and drink was cheapest in Bangalore, India, ($233.02) and priciest in Luanda, Angola, ($1,124.24), while Warsaw, Poland, had the cheapest cell phones ($4.99). Public transit was cheapest in Cairo, Egypt, at just $6.50 a month.

While different items cost less elsewhere, there’s that old saying that you get what you pay for. While Vancouver is expensive, many places cost more — and don’t suppose too many of us are interested in moving to Tunis, Cairo or Bangalore.

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